This exhibition reflects the artist’s central question: Do we have the right to imagine other’s possible futures? What if the future is not a linear extension of the present, but rather something that has not yet arrived, something incomplete, existing only as potential in dreams, hopes, and the unfulfilled tensions of the now?
As Siam began to feel the tremors of Western imperialism in the late 19th century, Hobbesian political theory gained influence. According to Hobbes, the natural state of humanity is the “war of all against all,” a chaotic, lawless condition driven by self-interest and the struggle for survival. To escape this state, individuals must surrender some of their autonomy to an absolute sovereign. The state, therefore, becomes the sole answer to maintaining order and peace.
This concept became foundational to the Thai state’s pursuit of legitimacy. Under this belief, the absence of the state would signal a collapse into savagery, a fall from civilization itself. But Hobbes’ theory is more than a political model; it shaped historical imagination and perception. During this era, knowledge was reorganized: the Thai elite were sent to study British colonial governance, influencing how the state conceptualized rule, "uncivilized" spaces, and legitimation through religious narratives and state-authored history.
The state systematically restructured national historiography, categorizing selective knowledge to centralize memory in Bangkok, while reducing local histories to background echoes of the national narrative. Regional voices were recast as mere supplements to the master story of the nation-state.
At the same time, the Lanna region was not only under the pressure of the Siamese state but also faced external influences, British colonial control through Burma, and the religious missions of American Baptist missionaries. These forces disrupted the cosmology of Lanna, which once understood time as cyclical and interwoven with spiritual narratives. Origin stories such as that of humans being sculpted from clay by celestial beings (as in the myth of Pu Sangasa and Ya Sangasi, present in Tai Lü, Tai Khün, Lanna Thai, and Isan traditions, also known in Buddhist-infused versions as Phrom Sangsī - Phrom Sang Sai) were gradually replaced by Christian linear time: from the creation of Adam and Eve to the Day of Judgement.
Ultimately, this shift was not only the erasure of myth but a fundamental transformation of how time, space, and society were understood, introducing Western orderings of history, identity, and governance. What remains are the haunting traces of what was excluded from the state’s historical narrative. Ghosts of a past never fully acknowledged.